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The Ontario Labour Relations Act (OLRA) has long dictated the legal relationship between trade unions and employers in the province. Although subject to years of delay, when the provincial government introduced the OLRA in 1950, its official stance on labour relations was a "hands off" program that was designed to leave collective bargaining to the participants. Often defined as industrial pluralism, this new legal regime was supposed to have been crafted in the name of "fairness and balance" in which trade unions abandoned previous militancy for state-sponsored freedoms. Upon closer examination, however, the provincial government's approach to industrial pluralism was much less hands off than has previously been assumed. Rather, the entrenchment of collective bargaining in Ontario was closely aligned with the class interests of Ontario businesses. Through an examination of the politics surrounding OLRA, this article argues that Teslie Frost's Conservative government structured the Act in order to appease employer demands surrounding increased legal regulation of collective bargaining and union organizing, which limited the extension of unionization throughout the province. In making this observation, the article maintains that the Conservative regime of industrial pluralism was both the by-product and the purveyor of ongoing class antagonism throughout the 1950s.

Canada’s system of industrial legality has routinely limited the collective abilities of workers to strike. Under the conditions of neoliberal globalization, those limitations have intensified. Yet, in 1997, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, waged a successful strike against Pepsi-Cola Canada. In addition to defeating the company, the union also expanded workers’ collective rights through a successful constitutional challenge to restrictive common-law rules limiting secondary picketing. This paper examines the history of that strike, exploring the multifaceted strategies that the workers undertook to challenge the company, the state, and the existing law. It argues that workers were successful because they utilized tactics of civil disobedience to defend their abilities to picket. Recognizing that success, the paper is also critical of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision and its evolution of common-law torts to limit workers’ collective action. The paper concludes by arguing that the Pepsi conflict highlights the importance of civil disobedience in building workers’ movements while emphasizing the inherent limitations of constitutional challenges to further workers’ collective freedoms in Canada.

The article reviews the book, "Bad Time Stories: Government-Union Conflicts and the Rhetoric of Legitimation Strategies," by Yonatan Reshef and Charles Keim.

Introduces the roundtable on back-to-work legislation held at the Canadian Association of Work and Labour Studies' annual conference in 2019. Summarizes the papers presented and pays tribute to the work of Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz.

In Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan (SFL v. Saskatchewan, 2015), the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that freedom of association in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes a collective ability for workers to strike. This decision was the latest in a series of cases in which the Supreme Court ruled that workers’ abilities to collectively bargain and strike are essential components of the constitutional protection of freedom of association. Using these decisions as a starting point, this paper reviews the uneven way that the court has elevated the associational freedoms of workers. The paper argues that the court’s balancing act between the collective freedoms of workers and the individual rights of employers conceals the material imbalance that has historically shaped capitalist social relations both inside and outside of the state. The paper argues further that these decisions have opened an important legal space for new mobilization strategies for working-class activists.

Wagnerism has been at the centre of Canadian labour relations since the end of World War II. Wagnerism rests on a so-called balance between workers and employers. Between 2007 and 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the constitution includes protections for good faith collective bargaining and to strike. In these cases, the Court stated that it is not constitutionally enshrining Wagnerism, yet it also leaned heavily on Wagner principles in arriving at its decisions. Building on interviews with national union leaders, I argue that the ambiguity between the Court's decisions and Wagnerism has left workers uncertain about how these rights alter the material conditions of unions. I conclude that the court's embrace of labour freedoms will only have material benefit if workers are willing to use these newfound freedoms to build working class capacities to directly confront ongoing attacks by governments and employers on core union freedoms.

The article reviews the book, "Change and Continuity: Canadian Political Economy in the New Millennium," edited by Mark P. Thomas, Leah F. Vosko, Carlo Fanelli, and Olena Lyubchenko.

Editorial on three conferences held in 2018-19 that examined the past, present and future of the study of working-class history.

Announces the co-editorship of Charles Smith and Joan Sangster for this volume, and gratefully acknowledges the work of former editors as well as funding from OPSEU. The journal is a joint partnership of the Canadian Committee on Labour History and the Canadian Association of Work Studies. Seeks submissions that reflect new directions in the study of the workplace and labour, including analyses of labour and the state, feminist political economy, strikes and workplace conflict, union renewal, new models of worker organizing, environmental justice, Indigenous struggles inside and outside the workplace, global workers’ movements, anti-racism campaigns, lgbtq2s struggles. Also welcomes contributions on the social world of work, e.g., popular and working-class cultures, the gendered and racialized experiences of workers, the intersections between colonialism and labour, and the many permutations of labour in the past and present – informal, paid, unpaid, coerced, voluntary.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Canadian unions have scored a number of important Supreme Court victories, securing constitutional rights to picket, bargain collectively, and strike. Unions in Court documents the evolution of the Canadian labour movement’s engagement with the Charter, demonstrating how and why labour’s long-standing distrust of the legal system has given way to a controversial, Charter-based legal strategy. This book’s in-depth examination of constitutional labour rights will have critical implications for labour movements as well as activists in other fields. --Publisher's description.

Over the past four decades, governments have backed away from the promotion of collective bargaining in Canada resulting in a tendency towards anti-unionism. Examining this new reality, this article investigates two interrelated trends in Canadian anti-unionism over the last two decades in an effort to conceptualize the role of the state in regulating labour relations. First, we investigate legislative attempts to undermine or eliminate the ability of workers to collectively bargain and strike. Second, the article unpacks the political economy of anti-unionism in the private sector by focusing on the role of lobby groups that have shaped labour legislation. These two interrelated threads allow us to expose the relationship between employers and governments, which has threatened the strength of organized labour in the private and public sector and shaped a uniquely Canadian anti-unionism. Finally, we conclude by examining both the strengths and limitations of the unique fight-back strategies used by the labour movement, which has sought to elevate aspects of Canadian labour law to be protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This, we argue, offers restrictive possibilities for advancing collective bargaining rights in the existing labour relations framework.

In The Canadian Labour Movement, historian Craig Heron and political scientist Charles Smith tell the story of Canada's workers from the midnineteenth century through to today, painting a vivid picture of key developments, such as the birth of craft unionism, the breakthroughs of the fifties and sixties, and the setbacks of the early twenty-first century. The fourth edition of this book has been completely updated with a substantial new chapter that covers the period from the great recession of 2008 through to 2020. In this chapter, Smith describes the fallout of the financial crisis, how Stephen Harper's government restricted labour rights, the rise of the "gig economy" and precarious work, and the continued de-industrialization in the private sector. These pressures contributed to fracturing the movement, as when Unifor, the largest private sector union, split from the Canadian Labour Congress, the established "house of labour." Through it all, rank-and-file union members have fought for better conditions for all workers, including through campaigns like the fight for a $15 minimum wage. --Publisher's description

Considers the human and financial cost of the 1918-19 flu pandemic versus the Covid-19 pandemic. Pays tribute to the late Leo Panitch, to whom the volume is dedicated. Comments on articles in the issue and notes that they emphasize the importance of all forms of work and organization. Deplores the rise of market-driven universities and the cuts at Laurentian University. Welcomes Kirk Niergarth as co-editor, which helps pave the way for Joan Sangster's retirement as co-editor.

Pays tribute to co-editor Joan Sangster, who retires with the publication of this issue. Comments that the COVID-19 pandemic has not dimmed the journal's quality, and that it remains committed to fostering scholarship, dialogue and debate on injustices and inequities which, if anything, have become more apparent in the present context. Reports the cancelation of a workshop on the carceral state in Canada due to the pandemic, but that the first of the papers that were to be delivered appear in the issue.

In [exploring] the labour movement's engagement with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, [the author] considers the labour movement's pursuit of legal strategies as a method of advancing its strategic interests. ...[The author] argues that labour's judicial-based strategies have produced mixed results for labour, and that ultimately, granting small protections to unions, courts have simultaneously reinforced legal constraints on workers' ability to to organize, associate and challenge the inqualities inherent in the employment relationship. --From editors' introduction

Explores the variable relationship of unions with the federal and provincial NDP (or the Parti Québécois), especially when it was the governing party. Concludes that while electoral participation may still be significant, broader mobilization is necessary for change to be achieved.

Examines the shifting currents of court decisions on labour rights in the Charter era. Concludes that labour's resort to the courts is primarily defensive and that victories, when they occur, are limited.

Introduced by editors Sangster and Smith, this roundtable offers papers by former students of Panitch on his multifaceted legacy. Themes include Panitch as organic intellectual (Warskett), the fall and future of social democracy (Blanc), money and the critique of capitalism between political sociology and political economy (Konings), Panitch and the practice of socialist mentorship (Maher), and Panitch as a transformative teacher (Ross).

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to re-establish the labour movement’s political capacity to exert collective power in ways that foster greater opportunity and equality for working-class people has taken on a greater sense of urgency. Understanding the strategic political possibilities and challenges facing the Canadian labour movement at this important moment in history is the central concern of this second edition of Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada. With new and revised essays by established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this edited collection assesses the past, present and uncertain future of Canadian labour politics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bringing together the traditional electoral-based aspects of labour politics with analyses of newer and rediscovered forms of working-class organization and social movement-influenced strategies, which have become increasingly important in the Canadian labour movement, this book seeks to take stock of these new forms of labour politics, understand their emergence and assess their potential impact on the future of labour in Canada. --Publisher's description. Contents: Part 1: Contextualizing Labour and Working-Class Politics. Canadian Labour and COVID-19 / Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage -- Business Unionism and Social Unionism in Theory and Practice / Stephanie Ross. Part 2: The Challenge of Electoral Politics. Struggling to Survive: The New Democratic Party and Labour in the Neoliberal Era / Alan Ernst and Bryan Evans -- Labour and Politics in Quebec / Peter Graefe -- Anybody but Conservative: Canadian Unions and Strategic Voting / Larry Savage. Part 3: The Prospects of Extra-Parliamentary Activism. Interrogating the Union Politics of Equity, Inclusion and Diversity / Winnie Ng and Carol Wall -- Which Side Are You On? Indigenous Peoples and Canada’s Labour Movement / Suzanne Mills and Tyler McCreary -- The Politics of Migrant Worker Organizing in Canada / Karl Gardner, Dani Magsumbol and Ethel Tungohan -- Community Unionism and Alt-Labour in Canada / Simon Black -- Canadian Labour and the Environment: Addressing the Value-Action Gap / Dennis Soron -- Class Struggle Goes to Court: Workers’ Rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms / Charles Smith and Alison Braley-Rattai.